Journalist Arrested Again, Russians Say

Last month, Russian authorities arrested journalist Andrei Babitsky, who had angered the military with his fearless reports on the Chechen war for U.S.-funded Radio Liberty. Then, in early February, they announced that they had handed him over to Chechen fighters, washing their hands of him and warning that they would not be responsible for his safety.

Now it seems they want him after all.

More than three weeks after the Russians said they had traded him for several Russian POWs, Babitsky turned up alive Friday, to the vast relief of family, friends and supporters who feared him dead.

But, in what is looking increasingly like a cat-and-mouse game, Russian officials announced Saturday that he was under arrest again, this time on charges of using a false passport.

It remains unclear whether prosecutors intend to pursue the charges of cooperating with Chechen rebels filed against him initially.

Saturday night, Babitsky reportedly was being held in a detention center in Makhachkala, capital of the republic of Dagestan, adjacent to Chechnya.

When the Russians announced that they had traded Babitsky, a Russian citizen, to Chechen fighters, the incident brought wide condemnation both within Russia and in the world at large. The case became a catalyst for international pressure on the Kremlin to open up Chechnya to journalists and outside observers trying to investigate alleged abuses and atrocities there.

Russian television network RTR showed two excerpts Saturday from a videotaped police interrogation of Babitsky in Makhachkala, ostensibly Friday afternoon.

On the tape, Babitsky admitted that the Azerbaijani passport he had been carrying was an obvious fake--but explained that he had no other documents and was afraid to reveal his whereabouts right after he was freed, apparently by the Chechens.

“I will gladly cooperate with the investigation, provided all the legal norms are observed,” he told his interrogator.

Babitsky also revealed that while initially in Russian custody, he had accepted a proposal from a man representing a commission working on the release of Russians held prisoner by the Chechens. Babitsky said he had agreed to be swapped to a Chechen field commander, Turpal Atgeriyev, in return for some Russian soldiers--but only on the understanding that he was to be immediately freed.

“I thought about it for about 10 minutes, and then I decided I would do it, because I knew Atgeriyev, and he [the commission representative] said that Atgeriyev would guarantee my immediate release,” Babitsky said.

Video footage released Feb. 4 by the Russians showed Babitsky being led away by masked men in fatigues.

A Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty colleague, Oleg Kusov, who had seen and spoken with Babitsky after his release, filled in more details Saturday: He said that as the swap unfolded and Babitsky realized that he was to be traded to masked men, he told the Russians that he would not go through with it.

“My understanding is it was a coerced exchange. When he saw a masked man, he realized it was not Atgeriyev he was going to as a hostage, and he refused to be exchanged. But, as he was made to understand, his word counted for nothing, and the masked man roughly grabbed him by the arm and led him toward a car,” Kusov told the NTV network.

Kusov also said that, before being turned over to the Chechens, Babitsky had been held in the notorious Chernokozovo “filtration” camp, one of several sites where Russians place suspected fighters for interrogation. There have been widespread reports of torture, rape and beatings in the camps, not only of fighters but of civilian men and women.

Babitsky was held in a Chechen village after the swap, Kusov said. One puzzling detail of Kusov’s account was that Babitsky, he recounted, said that he had been driven to Makhachkala in a car whose windows were covered but that, despite the many checkpoints in Russian-controlled Chechen territory, the car was not searched once.

Authorities have kept a tight rein on journalists in the separatist republic of Chechnya, and before his capture Babitsky was one of the few who had traveled throughout Chechnya during the war, covering both the Chechen and Russian sides and the suffering of civilians.

There is mounting evidence that the Russians have plenty to hide. The U.S.-based Physicians for Human Rights released a report Saturday contending that there have been “widespread and systematic abuses of Chechen civilians, including executions, extrajudiciary detention and torture.” The report was said to be based on interviews and medical examinations of 326 Chechen refugees in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia.

Spokesman Doug Ford, coordinator of the survey, said that 44% of those interviewed had witnessed a Chechen civilian being killed by the Russians and that 8% had seen a family member killed.

The report said Russians had shot doctors, killed hospital patients--including a 70-year-old Russian woman--in their beds, and beaten and tortured young men in the Chernokozovo camp.

In addition, the rights group said it has had unconfirmed reports from Chechnya in recent days that Russian forces were trying to cover up the number of people killed in Russian attacks by burning and otherwise disposing of victims’ bodies.

Acting Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s spokesman on the war, Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky, repeatedly has dismissed the allegations of atrocities as rebel propaganda.